Editorial: Put health, sportsmanship above all else

Thursday

Feb 28, 2008 at 12:01 AMFeb 28, 2008 at 8:50 PM

United effort needed to fight performance-enhancing drugs.

Dolgeville athletic director and football coach Chris Connolly has the right idea when it comes to steering young athletes away from substances that could hurt them. He has adopted a physical conditioning program that is a throwback to simpler times: “… eat right, work right and take absolutely no supplements.”

That should become the standard model for all sports programs. In addition, such substance abuse also needs to become part of a broader educational effort that relies not only on coaches but on parents, teachers and other role models who pledge to put good health and sportsmanship above everything else.

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There was a time when that was the mantra for all athletes. But then performance-enhancing drugs promising to help turn tough guys into super-stars worked their way into the win column. For years, most folks just whispered about such things and looked the other way. But a report issued late last year that names close to 80 current and former Major League Baseball players as persons who purchased or used such substances has brought the issue to the forefront. And it can no longer be ignored.

Connolly said he had to deal with the problem as far back as the mid-80s in some other schools. He said he hasn’t seen it or even suspected it in Dolgeville, and has a firm policy against student athletes using any supplement, even legal ones – a policy he stresses in preseason and in spring training.

“We don’t even use Gatorade, only water,” he said.

The report that prompted all the furor was issued by former Sen. George Mitchell, who cited a “collective failure” by everyone involved in Major League Baseball as allowing the problem to develop and grow. That’s largely due to a win-at-all-costs attitude that has festered at all levels of sports, oozing down to even the lowest levels of play, where instead of being taught the rudiments of the game and good sportsmanship, even the tiniest players quickly learn that it’s all about winning.

Unfortunately, that’s an attitude stressed not only by many coaches, but by parents – some of whom have actually been involved in physical assaults on referees, players and other parents. Such outrageous behavior only serves to reinforce the idea that anything goes so long as you win.

The “collective failure” Mitchell mentions must be turned into “collective success.” The temptation to become bigger and stronger can be tough for any teenager to resist.
That makes it incumbent on everyone involved in a young athlete’s life to discuss not only the health risks of these substances, but also to explain to them that winning really is losing if you have to cheat to get there.